Today, I goed to the dentist, but I was almost late because a big sinkhole opened up on Fairfield Avenue. People had warned the city that there was a sinkhole forming months ago, and the city opted not to fix it.
Because of this, we haven't had any water all day.
Also, as I was about to leave for my dentist appointment, some woman walking through the alley bubbled a blue bub.
Today at Kroger, I saw a Conraid Bain look-alike and a Ross Perot look-alike.
It's another December to dismember at The Last Word, as the December issue of The Last Word is now pub!
This ish talks about the city lying and changing its story about Flock cameras, Flock cameras being used for ethnic profiling, Flock cameras being used to falsely accuse people of crimes, a video in which a fisherman was harassed by spoiled teenagers, more broken windows policing failures, the shutdown of a perfectly legal file downloading website, Mister Rogers getting a parking ticket, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/957538579/The-Last-Word-12-2025
If that doesn't work, bip on over here...
Today at Kroger, I saw a Mister Rogers look-alike and a John Goodman look-alike.
Also, the music system played "Bastin'...There's No Stoppin' Us."
Today, I went to Target, and I overheard the sound of 2 LAP bunker blasts.
When I was in the checkout aisle, the guy in front of me looked exactly like Paul Benedict, who played the Number Painter on Sesame Street and Harry Bentley on The Jeffersons.
Back in August, I goed on a family trip that centered on Townsend, Tennessee. The event yielded 234 photos of a Roads Scholaring interest, and they're ready to fly out of your computer screen and slime you!
So point your pooper here..
It's gonna be another November to dismember with The Last Word!
The latest issue talks about pirate stations that broadcast flatulence, moms who found their brand new furniture ruined by family members' carelessness, a funny-shaped piece of bubble gum, schools' history of educational neglect, Montreal's war against bicyclists, how to make D.C. the 51st state under new boundaries, and more!
So bip your beeper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/940346888/The-Last-Word-11-2025
If that doesn't work, glide over here...
You might be surprised to learn that Utah was one of the first places in America to adopt a successful "housing first" model to fight homelessness. This program reduced homelessness in Utah by an astounding 91%. But when the state abandoned this effort in 2017 - under pressure from the far-right Cicero Institute - homelessness shot back up again.
Recently, it was announced that Salt Lake City was building a new complex in an undeveloped part of the city to house 1,300 homeless people. Many media outlets portrayed this as a great, forward-thinking move. But now the sad truth is starting to emerge.
It's actually a concentration camp. The city plans to round up homeless people, transport them to this camp involuntarily, and force them to do hard labor. Randy Shumway of the state's Homeless Services Board said of those housed there, "You're not coming in and out," and boasted that this detention camp was part of a fight against Utah's "culture of permissiveness." Yep, when I think of "permissiveness", I think of Utah. Shumway also writes for Forbes, which is owned by a Chinese Communist Party-linked company.
The Cicero Institute figures prominently in this boondoggle as well, as one of its officials praised this camp and demanded other states and cities follow.
Shumway - like a true Nazi - also urged expansion of involuntary "civil commitment" to have people locked up without due process.
The camp will lose money too. It will cost $75 million to build and $34 million per year to operate.
What we really need to do is go back to the "housing first" model that was successful in places that tried it. In addition to the 91% drop in Utah, this model virtually eliminated homelessness in Norway, and it reduced homelessness in Milwaukee by 50%. Some officials in Louisville have even become interested in "housing first" after a visit by Milwaukee officials.
If you support this Nazism, you always have the option to go fuck yourself, you know.
Fascism is on the march at Kenwood High School outside Baltimore. The school's artificial intelligence system thought a student was carrying a gun, but it was actually a Doritos bag. About 8 police cars showed up at the school, and the student was ambushed by gun-toting cops. He was then handcuffed and searched. No weapon was found.
Our electric bills are soaring and land is being seized to build AI data centers - while AI is being used to make life worse. We're all spending more and losing land just to be harmed.
The media calls that cool. Normal people call it fascism.
And one who supports fascism is a fascist. Ergo, the school in this story is run by fascists.
Remember when Newtzi's Nazis enacted the Contract with America?
The media cheered it, but real Americans spit in its face.
Well, the Trump regime's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is 30 years behind normal people, and thinks the Contract with America is still valid.
Several states have laws that rightly make it illegal for medical debt to appear on consumers' credit reports. Now the CFPB is planning on barking down an order to invalidate these state laws. The CFPB argues that a federal law passed in 1996 - perhaps the height of Contract with America fascism - preempts the states' powers to protect consumers from medical debt. The agency notes that this federal provision was set to expire, but that in 2003, it was made permanent. However, that was again by a rogue Congress.
A few months ago, Trump's CFPB already gutted a federal regulation that said states could indeed protect the public from medical debt, and now the CFPB is trying to go further with its new order by explicitly saying the states can't do so.
For starters, it is questionable whether laws passed by Congress during the Contract with America or the several years that followed it are even real law. Those "elections" were stolen - with the help of the right-wing media. This is also a Tenth Amendment issue.
The states have an easy remedy - if they have the guts to carry it out. The states should continue to enforce laws that bar medical debt from appearing on credit reports. By contrast, the CFPB has no army. It has no navy, no air force, and no marines. Not even a space force. It has a few political hacks in D.C. who talk big with their shit-caked mouths, but that's it.
Remember, Congress under the Contract with America also tried to repeal IDEA - one of the most enduring and important education laws in the land. If they had repealed IDEA and said that states couldn't pass their own laws like IDEA, would we be calling that legitimate?
Fascism is on the march in the Bay Area, because of course it is.
For years, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge north of San Francisco has had a path for pedestrians and bicyclists. But now California highway officials are turning the path into a shoulder open only for automobile traffic - leaving it as a walking and cycling path on weekends only.
There is no other cycling or walking path across the bay for miles around.
This is actually far costlier than leaving it alone. Moving the barrier each weekend will cost $1 million per year.
It's the type of fiscal wastage bastage only the Tea Party could love. Naturally, this change was put in place at the urging of wealthy Marin County residents who opposed working-class people traveling into the county on bikes.
Reddit hermits are cheering.
Move over, California and Fort Lauderdale. America has a new book-banning capital: Hawaii.
Right now, libraries all over America are observing Banned Books Week, in which they showcase books that have been banned or censored. But the Hawaii State Public Library System, which oversees all public libraries throughout the Aloha State, has nixed the event.
One local branch had featured the most widely censored books, along with informational materials from the American Library Association. But this libe was forced to censor this very display.
The statewide library system now prohibits use of the words censorship and banned to refer to books that have been censored or banned. ALA materials and props like caution tape are also forbidden. Stickers with the motto "Censorship is so 1984" were confiscated.
Why? State library officials say Banned Books Week is not "inclusive." Seriously, they said that.
Books are about ideas. Inclusiveness involves a collection of these ideas. Banned Books Week highlights this inclusiveness.
Hawaii's act of censorship sounds like yet another example of right-wing policy using more expansive branding. In other words, by attacking Banned Books Week as not being "inclusive", the state library system is practicing that 2020s phenomenon called wokewashing. This means they market themselves as champions of social justice even though their policies stand for the exact opposite.
Did the People's CDC take over the Hawaii library system when nobody was looking?
World Economic Forum canker sore Andy Beshear is at it again.
After Ant Farm Andy cut senior meals last month, he's now taking an axe to the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program. KTAP is a program that provides financial assistance to low-income families with children. Starting next month, these payments will be significantly reduced.
Beshear's complaint is that KTAP loses more money that it takes in. Uh, it doesn't lose money. It costs money, but it doesn't lose money. Nobody ever says the Department of Defense loses money. The Department of Defense is always spending money that the government doesn't have, as the government has been in debt for as long as anyone can remember. Besides that, Kentucky has enough discretionary funds to last for months.
This is like how Social Security is expected to run out and stop paying recipients, but somehow the Pentagon is never expected to run out.
Don't let the fact that America lets shell corporations that are fronts for foreign dictatorships own American land fool you. The Trump regime is often very hostile to immigrants and their families. While corporations and oppressive foreign governments are tolerated, people aren't.
The Biden regime pressured major websites into censoring factual information about COVID-19. Now the Trump thugocracy is coercing companies into yanking apps that let you track ICE agents.
Under pressure from embattled Attorney General Pam Bondi, Apple has pulled apps that enabled users to flag sightings of officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Joshua Aaron, who created ICEBlock - one of the banned apps - said Apple is "capitulating to an authoritarian regime."
The apps are being banned even though they are constitutionally protected and do not violate any laws. All ICEBlock does is show the whereabouts of ICE officers. It has been downloaded over a million times all over the country. However, ICEBlock is not available for the much more common Android system, as Aaron says Android tracks user data.
Back in July, Bondi made an outright threat against Aaron by saying, "We are looking at him, and he better watch out."
Banning ICEBlock is like banning OpenStreetMap because it gives the locations of Flock cameras - like the one the city of Bellevue placed outside my window in retaliation.
With Trump, Bondi, and a complicit Congress covering up the Jeffrey Epstein scandal - along with the regime's illegal censorship of ICE-tracking apps - I think Trump has again outranked Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the countdown of all-time worst Presidents. He might not be worse than George W. Bush, but probably the others.
It's gonna be an October to be unsober, which means it's time for the October issue of The Last Word!
This ish talks about a Pennsylvania trip, people putting their eyeglasses in the toilet at Oktoberfest, our new People's Land Bank, the hostile takeover of an Iowa radio station, weird shoplifting stories, a strange ad about smoking on airplanes, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/924990703/The-Last-Word-10-2025
If that doesn't work, sneak on over here...
Today, I walked past the gas pumps at Circle K, and some guy who was pumping gas ripped an LAP bunker blast.
Back in 2019, I didn't know Kentucky was electing a Tea Party governor, but what a disaster Andy Beshear has been.
WKDZ radio reports that funding will "evaporate" for home delivered meals for the elderly across the state because of cuts by Beshear. In some parts of the state, over half its funding will be slashed.
Beshear said funding for vital programs like this will be cut at least until the next legislative session.
Yet he approved a handout for the wealthiest among us in the form of an income tax measure that continued to gut the state's progressive income tax - thus prolonging Matt Bevin's policy that drove economic turmoil and drained human potential from the state. You can't claim that you're tightening the belt for everyone when you're just giving more handouts to the rich.
It's always austerity and scraps for the 99%, but free money for the 1%.
Yesterday, I goed to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati - or as I call it, Ploptoberfest. And - what a shock - it lived up to the name I gave it.
Someone put a broken pair of eyeglasses and a Pepsi bottle in the toilet.
I may have more details on this in the next issue of The Last Word. Along with the Alan Hale Jr. and George Michael look-alikes.
Somehow I don't think this is what the Communications Act of 1934 had in mind.
Yesterday, Brian Kilmeade - one of the nobodies who serves as a "reporter" on Fox News Channel - endorsed murdering the homeless. During a segment about homelessness, he advocated "involuntary lethal injection or something. Just kill 'em."
One Twitter commenter said this "might be the most shocking thing any talking head has ever said on television."
This is yet another reason why the FCC needs to step in and restore ownership caps like it used to have and bring back the fairness doctrine.
Predictably, the Democrats are silent on this, because they'd rather attack some farmer in Montana for not wearing a mask at Circle K 5 years ago than go after Fox News.
Time yet again to pay our Roads Scholaring dues, and this batch of road photos involves our June peepage of the new development at the old IRS site in Covington...
http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/irs25.html
As a bonus, I've included a small set from July showing the flooding rains we've been getting lately, so if you dare, you may want to glide on over here as well...
This evening, I smuggled Sprite into Rip-off-fest - continuing a proud tradition.
I didn't see any good temper tantrums at Rip-off-fest this year. Nothing like the time people got in a big argument over blankets. There was also nothing like the time a drunken woman rightly criticized George W. Bush for his fascism.
But I succeeded at my goal of soft drink smuggling.
The September edition of The Last Word is now pub!
It's our back-to-school issue! This ish talks about a flatulence-filled Tennessee trip, Kentucky's war against homeschooling, our struggle with Verizon, psychiatric fascism in Illinois, an altercation in a school library, Steve Kroft blowing a bubble, the decline of NKU, assorted corporate scams, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/908696489/The-Last-Word-9-2025
If that doesn't work, blow a bubble like Steve Kroft and fly on over here...
Back in June, I partook in another Roads Scholaring in Cincinnati. The 20 photos it yielded were mostly on the north side of town and beam wildly at the world.
So peep them until your face flies off in public (as a wise man would say)...
Tyranny is on the march in Mason County.
Just northwest of Maysville, the county is trying to seize land from farmers and residents so a big electric utility can build a data center that would gobble up 5,000 acres - almost 8 square miles.
The data center would be run by East Kentucky Power Cooperative. EKPC is ostensibly a nonprofit utility, but the data center push sounds more like something from the most notorious proprietary companies.
The entire event has been wrapped in secrecy, as several county officials signed confidentiality agreements about the project. People who were approached about selling their land didn't even know what it was for until later.
This comes after state lawmakers and the Beshear administration passed a measure to give massive tax breaks for data centers. In addition, the Trump regime granted exemptions for utilities to release pollutants like mercury, which would otherwise violate federal regulations. What's the point in having regulations if utility companies can receive exemptions just for the asking?
These data centers primarily serve AI platforms of huge corporations like Google and Facebook. This is while flawed AI models are being used to police online content and determine eligibility for government benefits such as Social Security Disability Insurance. The data centers use huge amounts of power, strain power grids, and drive up energy costs for everyone else. If the Mason County project is built, its power usage is expected to grow 20 times in its first 5 years.
The county now says it won't use eminent domain to take the land, but don't laugh too hard at the idea of the government confiscating land for a private company. Virginia already abused eminent domain to give land to the politically connected Dominion Energy to build transmission lines for a data center.
Meanwhile, electric utilities keep giving deep discounts to data centers while hiking rates for everyone else. More handouts for big corporations. Imagine that!
We were absolutely flabbergasted to discover this, as it ranks right up there with Delaware towns giving voting "rights" to corporations (which the Nazis also did).
The Knoxville News Sentinel ran a story recently noting that the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, now enforces a property requirement to vote in city elections.
This unconstitutional rule allows those who own property in the city to vote even if they don't live there. This means almost 300 people may have been able to vote in Knoxville who do not live in the city, thus receiving special rights in violation of the "one person, one vote" principle. There are reportedly 2 other cities in Tennessee that practice similar discrimination. According to a Facebook post, one of the others is the small town of Lexington.
We're usually not big fans of "This time we mean it" laws, but we think it's time to amend the U.S. Constitution to reinforce the "one person, one vote" idea and bar people from voting in jurisdictions where they do not live. If that doesn't happen, the National Guard should be pressed into service to enforce fair voting rights. Barring that, the people should enforce the law and make citizen's arrests of election officials who participate in violating "one person, one vote."
Broward County, Florida, may be emerging as America's book banning capital. Public schools in that county are yanking 55 books off library shelves ahead of the new school year.
The books include a Judy Blume novel, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and a novel about a victim of human trafficking.
This follows a similar ban in Hillsborough County, where the school superintendent was quoted as saying, "When our '25-26 school year starts, I want to be assured that there is absolutely zero, none, zero inappropriate material in our libraries."
Why are we bringing this up? It's because these are big, urban counties that everyone acts like are so sophisticated. They're not small Rust Belt burgs or Montana farming counties. Broward has more people than Hillsborough, and in most of recent history has probably been the more authoritarian of the two on most major issues. Naturally, Kamala Harris won Broward by 17%, which suggests that the Democrats have become as much of a right-wing authoritarian party as the Republicans.
Urban sophisticates claim to be so liberal, yet they're out there burning books.
Gentrification. Bringing book bans to a city near you.
The year has been mostly a rainout, but on one of the few dry days of the year, I embarked on a Roads Scholaring in Latonia!
This event yielded 23 photos, and you can peep and weep here...
Corporate America has had a love affair with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear ever since he hamstrung the state with COVID totalitarianism that kept worsening even almost a year after a vaccine was introduced. This affair continued when Beshear approved further gutting of the state tax code - thus hitting poor and working-class Kentuckians harder. Then Beshear spoke before the far-right World Economic Forum, proving he was a cutout of that secret society.
Even the Kentucky Lantern seems to have had their fill of this poo-poo. A Kentucky Lantern piece reveals that big corporations have been heavily bankrolling Beshear's superPAC, which seems to be an exploratory effort for a possible presidential bid. Among the top donors to this superPAC is a big real estate developer.
Another is utility giant Louisville Gas & Electric. LG&E has been the target of complaints from customers who found that the company overcharges for electricity by overestimating their electric usage. One customer reported receiving a bill for over $600. Another said LG&E's parent company cut off their service in retaliation for complaining to the Better Business Bureau about bad service.
The superPAC has spent a lot of money propping up professional political operatives and consulting firms. It doesn't even do much to advance policies or candidates. The massive flow of money is what inspired Beshear's own right-wing policies. He's less right-wing on issues where there's less money to encourage him to be more right-wing.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that corporations can now give unlimited amounts of money to superPAC's. This bottomless spigot needs to be shut off lickety-split.
Last night, I had another funny dream. I dreamed I was back in 5th grade, and the teacher was out of the room all day. So someone wrote on the chalkboard, "I bet Oscar the Grouch's shit stinks from eating all that trash."
Summer is over, Grover, and it's time for the August edition of The Last Word, your road atlas to peace, equality, and liberty!
This ish talks about a costly sewer boondoggle, the growing graft and lies of both major parties, the difficulty of blowing bubbles at Candlestick Park, more people getting kicked out of amusement parks, cowboy hats getting ruined, my unofficial senior photo, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/895515498/The-Last-Word-8-2025
If that doesn't work, bubble a bub and float on over here...
This is serious, so wipe that smirk off your face.
You may know about Land of the Lost - my blog in which I profile old hit songs that are no longer played on the radio. One recent entry dealt with the 1985 chart hit "Talk To Me" by Fiona. This entry was used as a reason to describe in detail MTV Top 20 Video Countdown. I embedded a video from YouTube of that countdown show in which host Mark Goodman wore a ridiculous shirt. I didn't post that video on YouTube. It was from someone else's account.
But now that video has been blocked by Seoul Broadcasting System, which claims it contains their copyrighted material.
This is flat-out wrong. SBS is one of the biggest broadcasters in South Korea, and it has nothing to do with MTV. SBS didn't even go on the air until 1991 - 6 years after that countdown aired. So it's impossible for SBS to own that content. SBS had absolutely zero connection to anything in that clip.
Yet - inexplicably - YouTube accepted SBS's bogus copyright complaint.
What we need to do is start making companies that make phony copyright complaints pay the same penalties faced by those who actually violate copyright laws. Granted, this was an international complaint. But SBS would have a choice of either sending its lawyers to America to face the music in an American court, or losing the case by default and having to pay a penalty.
Ironically, SBS was itself accused of violating the International Olympic Committee's copyright in 2008 by broadcasting a show about the Olympic opening ceremony before it was authorized to do so. So I guess rules don't apply to SBS.
This is a crisis that needs to be slapped down posthaste.
A recent report reveals that the government of Singapore - one of the most totalitarian regimes in the world - owns 5% of all land in the huge Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This totals over a half-million acres in forestland. In Gogebic County, Singapore owns one-sixth of the land.
The regime accomplishes this through shell corporations, so it was hard to find out who the real owner is. The government of Singapore is the biggest foreign owner of land in the whole state.
A bill in Michigan would bar companies from certain countries from owning land, but Singapore is not among those countries.
Why is a foreign government that cheats on trade deals and is one of the most oppressive regimes on the globe able to own land in the U.S.? Most countries don't even let individuals from friendly nations own land, but America lets a foreign government own land.
Here's an example of the rules most countries have regarding foreign ownership. In the early days of radio, John R. Brinkley was an American quack doctor who built a radio station in Kansas that he used to peddle his phony impotence cures. The Federal Radio Commission - the forerunner of the FCC - refused to renew Brinkley's broadcasting license, largely because of his deceitful ways. Then Brinkley started a station in Mexico that was beamed across the border for U.S. listeners. The station was so powerful that ranchers could hear it through metal fences. But then Mexico said foreign owners couldn't own radio stations, so they nationalized his station.
They weren't fooling around. Mexican soldiers appeared at the station's headquarters and forced Brinkley to shut down.
What should be done about the land owned by Singapore in Michigan? The county, state, or federal government should take that land. All of it. We shouldn't feel guilty about it. A shell corporation that serves as a front for a foreign dictatorship does not have rights - much less a right to own American land.
Schools: "Let's close for 2 years over COVID."
Also schools: "Let's not excuse students for illness."
Ridiculousness is on the march in Lawrence County, Tennessee, as the local school district has announced that it will no longer excuse absences if a student is ill - even if they provide a doctor's note.
According to WSMV-TV, if a student misses 8 days in a school year due to illness, they will automatically be referred to juvenile court for truancy. The school district's director bellowed, "You can bring all the doctor's notes you want, but it is still unexcused." The district even sent a letter to doctors discouraging them from writing notes.
If a student shows up to school and is sent home by the nurse for being ill, they will be marked as tardy.
You can't make this up. They really said that.
While our previous entry touched on the right-wing World Economic Forum agenda taking over NPR and PBS, it's only fair to present the fact that not all public broadcasting is in such dire condition.
A public radio outlet in upstate New York once reported somewhat accurately and objectively on all the COVID totalitarianism. More specifically, it ran a story about a monstrous state regulation - which was not enacted until months after the vaccine came out - that forced toddlers in daycare to wear masks. This piece at least was fairer than the disgusting pieces that many commercial news outlets were putting out at the time. (Right now, we're glaring squarely at the ABC station in Chicago, but they weren't the only offender.)
Anything related to COVID still sticks in people's craw, but at least some public broadcasters came through in reporting it properly. By contrast, commercial media liked to coo and smirk as they defended every new act of COVID tyranny, even as many of their reporters failed to follow the rules they supported for everyone else.
I'd rather my tax dollars go to public broadcasters who do their jobs than to more bailouts for corporate media outlets that insert their intolerable nonsense into news stories.
If PBS had gone off the air 50 years ago, it would have been an incalculable loss.
But NPR and PBS haven't done very much in the past few years to win our hearts and minds.
Let's get this out of the way: The government's current attempts to zero out PBS and NPR funding are illegal. Full stop. Yet that doesn't excuse the recent decline of these broadcasters.
The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 bars federal taxpayer financing of the broadcast of government propaganda. Yet NPR has aired exactly that. For example, NPR has repeatedly insisted that COVID-19 naturally leaped from animals to humans, while dismissing the lab leak theory. This is even after the lab leak theory was proven.
Why should NPR broadcast right-wing World Economic Forum propaganda and expect us to not at least rub our necks in frustration when asked to pony up?
Even Big Bird isn't safe. Sesame Street is unrecognizable these days, and in the past 5 years, it too has been a vehicle for totalitarian WEF propaganda. Nowadays, you can't tell Sesame Street from The Get Along Gang.
What we really need to do is start enforcing the Smith-Mundt Act. Perhaps the states should have some sort of committee to oversee its enforcement.
However, if PBS and NPR were defunded, we'd surely regret it. Already, an organization of right-wing religious broadcasters is gloating that these cuts may force many noncommercial radio stations off the air even if they only air a little bit of NPR programming. This will allow the checkbook clergy to swoop in and take over these stations' licenses. Many of these religious broadcasters do not offer any local programming at all and rely solely on right-wing nationwide networks - and NPR isn't one of them.
We want so badly to save NPR and PBS because of their historic reputation. But in the past few years, they've damaged their case, and it's probably too late.
Austerity kills.
Recently, flooding in Kerr County, Texas, caused over 100 deaths. Officials say there were no flood warning sirens in place because Tea Party groups had pressured the county into not installing them. If there had been warning systems, these deaths could have been avoided.
Congress passed a law to provide a rescue package for communities all over the country afflicted by the COVID pandemic. This made Kerr County eligible for over $10 million in federal money, which it could have used for a flood warning system. But the county rejected a big chunk of this money because of hounding by the few Tea Party diehards who hadn't abandoned the movement by the 2020s.
But we have long memories, and we know this isn't the first time something like this has happened.
Something similar took place just before the deadly floods in northern Kentucky in 1997 (which were quickly forgotten by the media). A flood gauge had been deactivated by a right-wing Congress using the same excuses the Tea Party later used. If it hadn't been deactivated, a lot of lives could have been saved. We shouldn't have to bring it up now, but nothing was done about it when we talked about it back then, and we're not sure if anything ever was done later. Sadly, this isn't surprising, because nothing has ever been done about anything like this in the past 40 years. We offered fair warning about what would happen if this lazy attitude continued, but we were brushed off.
The entire philosophy of austerity is a fatal one. There is blood on the hands of the Republican Congress of the '90s. Those who refused to install flood sirens more recently are no better.
Also, the Koch network - which helped bankroll the Tea Party - supported the failed lockdowns during COVID. It published a bogus pro-lockdown report through a heavily politicized institute at the University of Kentucky. So they can't say they opposed the flood warning systems on the grounds of "limited government" - which would have been a ridiculous argument anyway.
We have some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that we have reports of people all over America setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July. These displays were patriotic and scenic. Yet some of it took place in locales where such fireworks are not only officially illegal but where authorities also vowed to actively crack down. The fact that people used fireworks in these places isn't the bad news though. We've never said fireworks should be completely unregulated, but we have no interest or desire to go after individuals who defy rules that clearly go too far.
In other words, our fight is against prohibition. It's no different for fireworks now as it was for alcohol 100 years ago. One thing that fueled our stance is the fact that - some 30 to 40 years ago - we were victims of violent crimes that repeatedly went unpunished because the perpetrators had clout with the system. If their repeated violence was tolerated, we have no business banning firecrackers and bottle rockets that are far less dangerous. Fair is fair.
Here's the bad news. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which covers all of Clark County, Nevada, spent the run-up to the Fourth going after people for legal fireworks. Police fanned out into neighboring counties and nearby Native American reservations and staked out fireworks shops for customers from Clark County. Some customers were caught and were ticketed. They each face fines of hundreds of dollars.
This is despite the fact that the fireworks they purchased were actually legal. Some of these customers even made a point of buying the tamest fireworks possible, just so they knew they were well within the law. They're being fined even though the fireworks were seized before they could even bring them into Clark County.
Officials in some of these communities demanded that Clark County stop sending its police outside their own county to harass buyers of legal products. It also turned out there were plainclothes police in the stores to entrap people into buying fireworks.
Now back to good news. Folks in Las Vegas say they saw plentiful fireworks in their neighborhoods despite the rogue crackdown. This was even as KLAS-TV urged viewers to report people for setting off fireworks. KLAS's crusade brings us back to bad news again. The KLAS piece even attacked the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians for selling fireworks. Real tolerant of you, Nexstar.
This is America in 2025. And cities are closing things down over "moral standards."
The city of Provo, Utah, has shut down a dance fitness class, claiming it didn't align with the city's "morals" and "values." The class had taken place in the city's recreation center for 3 years. The closure followed a complaint by one lone resident running his mouth. The class was closed despite the fact that even some city employees had taken part in the program.
People who support regulating "morals" in this manner are always the same folks who push for policies that hamstring valuable services for those who are most in need. At their very core, they actually have no interest in doing anything that's right for society. Their interest is only in shutting down things that personally displease them.
Since we're living in strange times, we're holding both major parties equally responsible - even though this story is from Utah. Some of the tyranny in other states lately is just as mind-blowing, as you know.
The July ish of The Last Word is pub, and you can bubble with it. Just joking! Actually, it is published, and this edition talks about a local mayor picking fights with residents, more Flock camera abuses, a 4th grade mischief contest, one state's plan to distribute cavity-fighting gum, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/881882242/The-Last-Word-7-2025
If that doesn't work, glide on over here...
You're not going to hear much about this story, because it was a crime committed by rich residents of some luxury apartments. If a homeless person had committed this same crime, you'd never hear the end of it.
Two men - a father and son - have been convicted of running a drug ring out of their luxury apartments in Cincinnati. The drugs included fentanyl, crystal meth, and cocaine. The apartments were in the Pendleton and Mount Auburn neighborhoods. These luxury dwellings were gentrification projects that drove out many of the neighborhoods' previous low-income residents. One of apartments cost $4,200 per month.
Federal court documents say the Pendleton apartment was "a major source of illegal narcotics in Cincinnati."
This is like how one of the richest streets in Southgate - a street where lots of right-wing politicians live - was known as the go-to place to buy heroin. The media of course never covered that.
Gentrification. Bringing drug lords to a neighborhood near you.
Today, to make use of the record heat, I went back to the pool at Ziegler Park in Cincinnati. Channel 5 was there! But if I got on the news at all, it was probably only briefly.
Also, some couple smuggled in beer - in stark violation of an Allowed Cloud. I also detected the smooth, airy vapors of a certain green herb.
The tradition of seeing celebrity look-alikes at this pool continued as I saw a Sinead O'Connor look-alike.
The far-right World Economic Forum agenda has crossed another threshold of stupid.
Some of you know that on the few days when we have suitable weather, I use the swimming pool at Ziegler Park in Cincinnati. A couple of times, people have pooped in it, causing it to be closed for a bit. Anyway, you used to be able to pay cash for admission and snacks. But a few years ago, this public pool began to accept only credit cards - for no apparent reason.
This was a problem today, because the card reader at the snack stand was broken, even though the stand only takes credit cards. So I had to walk all the way over to the entrance to pay for my chips.
This is idiotic beyond belief. If they accepted cash, we wouldn't have to worry about a broken card reader. Yet they will not accept cash, no matter how much everyone pleads. Cash is supposed to be legal tender, but that's lost on 3CDC, the WEF, and the right-wing media.
Why do so many venues - especially in close proximity to the far-right 3CDC - reject cash? It couldn't just be to exclude those who they want to exclude. Ever since apps and online retailers became popular, very few American adults today have no credit card, because it's impractical or impossible to pay cash for app or online purchases. That's different from paying in-person like at a public pool or a festival. Clearly, someone is using credit cards to collect data on customers. Otherwise, these in-person venues wouldn't require credit cards. Who knows who has our personal information and what they'll use it for?
Today's encounter was complicated by another factor. This isn't limited to young people who toil away at snack stands. It's afflicted almost everyone over the past 5 years. The problem is that everyone mumbles now. I could hardly hear a word they said at the snack stand today. How did everyone get in the habit of mumbling? What were people doing a few years ago that gave rise to this habit? Ponder, ponder. Again, this problem plagues all of society - not just a few people.
An otherwise fine pool is dampened by the expanding totalitarianism of 3CDC and the WEF. I may go back there in the very near future, so I'll be sure to bring my walking shoes so I can walk all the way over to the entrance when I pay for a snack.
On Tuesday, in front of a local restaurant, I saw an elderly couple who looked just like Joe and Jill Biden walking along the sidewalk!
The Kentucky division of Duke Energy - the powerful monopoly that controls utility service in greater Cincinnati and charges some of the most exorbitant electric rates in the nation - has been fined $120,000 by Kentucky's Public Service Commission. The commission found that Duke committed billing violations affecting almost 8,000 customers and that the violations were "willful", as they continued even after Duke was warned to stop.
"Willful" means deliberate and intentional. It was not an accident. It was not an oversight. They did it on purpose.
Anyone who still had a benign view of our major corporations and institutions can wipe the poo off their face now.
Today, I went Roads Scholaring over in Northside. While I was resting at Hoffner Park, I heard the sound of an LAP bunker blast.
The June issue of The Last Word is pub, and it's going to gobble you up when you least expect it!
This ish talks about our town installing Flock cameras to retaliate against dissidents, memories of carnival fights, people stupidly ruining records, a university's dumb rules on how to throw pies at people, a 21-and-up McDonald's, and more!
So poop your pointer here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/868675526/The-Last-Word-6-2025
If that doesn't work, glide on over here...
Today, I braved the rain to go to Kroger. While I was there, some woman was in such a Krogery mood that she bubbled.
This morning, I went to the parade down the street, and some kid kept bubbling in elders' faces and making a big deal out of it.
Earlier today, I went to Taste of Cincinnati - or as I call it, Baste of Cincinnati - and was it ever booorrrrring!
But there's lots of poologgery going on that must be confronted. There were ploppings too, but I'll get to those.
The main issue there was that most of the food stands that I patronized only accepted credit cards. No cash was accepted. You could wave George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in their face, and they wouldn't take it.
In my day, this was unthinkable. It was unthinkable even the last time I went to Baste of Cincinnati, not to mention the most recent Ploptoberfest, which was only 8 months ago. But the far-right World Economic Forum agenda is rapidly encroaching.
When I used the portable restroom, I did notice that several items had been plopped into the dumper. They included one of those plastic rings that holds together 6-packs of soda, small plastic bottle lids, and a pair of underpants someone wiped their ass with. So at least Baste of Cincinnati isn't a total loss.
But I'm not likely to ever return to Baste of Cincinnati unless their food stands start accepting cash again. There ought to be a law. Every currency note is printed with a notice that it's legal tender. I'm old enough to remember when that meant what it said (because I'm older than 5).
The big story here isn't that a state planned to allow public funding of religious schools. This happens all the time through voucher schemes, even though it's unconstitutional. The real story is that the U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 on this case when it shouldn't have even been close.
Not long ago, Oklahoma planned to allow a religious charter school run by the state's Catholic dioceses. The constitutional problem with this was obvious: The school would have received public funding to sponsor religion. But even Oklahoma's Republican Attorney General didn't support this affront to separation of church and state, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled 6-2 against the dioceses.
Now the U.S. Supreme Court - with only 8 of its Justices on the case - has split 4-4 on the matter. This means that the lower court ruling stands, and that you can't have religious charter schools. The real shocker is that it was 4-4 instead of 8-0. Because of this deadlock, similar cases could be tried later.
In brief, religious charter schools are unlawful, as they constitute taxpayer sponsorship of religion. This is basic constitutional law. There is no wiggle room on this. Sometimes you can see how courts can disagree on how to interpret constitutional law - after all, that's a main reason we have courts - but this is a case where there is absolutely no ambiguity. Yet the Supreme Court has drifted so far from even the most basic legal principles that they ruled 4-4 instead of 8-0.
This has been backlogged on our hard drive for 19 years, and the culprit is a newspaper that's been out of business almost as long. But we can't let this go unanswered. (That's how The Last Word got its name.) I was attacked by the familiar suspects we all know and love for 35 years, and 19 pales in comparison.
Back in 2006, the right-wing Cincinnati Post ran a right-wing editorial demanding draconian sweeps against homeless encampments so nobody would have to see them during the Tall Stacks festival. This nonsense put out by the Post sounds like it's straight out of the Tea Party or the People's CDC...
"City officials, with ample notice, should clean out the camps, particularly those along the downtown riverfront. They need not feel guilty about it. If there's any guilt to assign, it involves the shortage of institutional housing alternatives for the mentally ill who constitute such a large portion of the homeless population."
In other words, the Post not only wanted to conduct brutal sweeps of encampments but also lock up the homeless in psychiatric "hospitals."
This frenzied screed from 19 years ago is still relevant now, because this right-wing mentality encouraged the increasingly violent responses that cities unleash against the homeless today.
One of the most widely ignored stories is the likelihood of planes crashing into homes. It's been a national epidemic for decades, yet nothing is ever done about it.
Many years ago, a jet airliner struck a North Carolina neighborhood. Newspapers carried photos of debris strewn up and down the street, but this wake-up call went unheeded. A commercial jet crashed in a residential area near Buffalo. Not long after 9/11, a plane crashed in a Queens neighborhood where many firefighters who served in 9/11 lived. Many people on the ground or in their homes have died from planes hitting.
Now a private business jet has crashed into a San Diego neighborhood, burning over a dozen homes.
As long as planes are as prone to crashes as they have been lately, flight paths should at least be modified to avoid going over heavily populated neighborhoods. Other folks have been warning about this danger for years, so the FAA had to have known about it. A Queens-based watchdog group many years ago called Sane Aviation For Everyone had warned about this very thing, and the aforementioned Queens crash proved the group's warnings should have been heeded. SAFE stepped up its warnings after this tragedy, and a bill was introduced in Congress to reroute New York area flight paths. It's unclear if these paths were ever changed, and threats remain all over the country.
This is a national scandal, and - maddeningly - it's getting no attention at all.
Last month, I went Roads Scholaring on Cincinnati's Wasson Way - or as I call it, Wozzfozz Way.
That event yielded 25 photos of a Scholaring sort.
As usual, peep and ye shall weep...
Criminal defendants have a right to a fair trial. That even includes those who we strongly suspect are guilty.
But some Ohio officials want to change all that. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, wants to make crowdfunding efforts for criminal suspects illegal. Remember, these are only suspects - not those who have actually been convicted.
Some of the crowdfunding campaigns that would be banned aren't just for legal costs but also the defendants' families.
A law against these crowdfunding campaigns would of course be unconstitutional. We've lamented the mollycoddling of known violent criminals, but a law like this shreds due process to unrecognizable scraps.
GoFundMe reportedly banned such campaigns for criminal defendants several years ago, following pressure by the media for stiff punishments for those who violated COVID lockdowns, but Ohio's new law would force all crowdfunding sites to have such a policy.
Ohio lawmakers are already working on a bill to do Yost's bidding.
Earlier this evening, I went to an important family gathering, and the scent of an SBD bunker blast was detected.
"I was Belvin' in Bellevue...Belvin' on that Covert Run Pike they built..."
I just posted 12 new Roads Scholaring photos from a recent outing in Newport and Bellevue!
It was a brief event, since I had my usual medical issues to take care of, but you're gonna bip through 'em nonetheless...
Highland Heights, Kentucky! My hometown!
Before a big glob of mucus gobbles you up, it would be cool if you pept and bept a batch of Roads Scholaring photos I got last month around Highland Heights and Cold Spring. There's 18 items, and they rule!
So point your pooper here...
This item has been largely covered up, but it explains a lot.
It has been revealed that the University of California, Berkeley, received $220 million from the Chinese government - that is to say the Chinese Communist Party. Federal officials turned a blind eye to it for several years.
This isn't surprising, and we're sure other American universities - maybe even local school systems - have also accepted CCP dough. The difference with UC Berkeley is that this school eventually got caught.
The Trump administration now says it is investigating the university, but I'll believe that when I see it. In other words, I won't believe it, because it's unlikely that Trump is actually doing much. Biden didn't go after the school either.
This story is important because it shows how hostile our education system is to the values of liberal democracy. It is not indifferent but outright adversarial.
All sorts of neet poo goes on down in the 'Nati!
That's why the No New Normal Cam has bubbled forth 20 new photos from a Roads Scholaring in downtown Cincinnati in March! There's some old signy goodness, some alleys, and other biperoony.
So point your pooper here...
The Last Word trudges along with its May issue!
This ish talks about a local Flock camera boondoggle, fun with OpenStreetMap, Bazooka bubble gum soda, congressional wastage bastage, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/855512221/The-Last-Word-5-2025
If that doesn't work, slink on over here...
Longtime Mayor R. Rex Parris of Lancaster, California - a Republican - has long been known as one of the worst mayors in America.
Now he says he wants to kill homeless people by poisoning them with fentanyl. At a recent city council meeting, Parris said he wants to eliminate homelessness in his city by giving the homeless "all the fentanyl they want."
Later, Parris said he wants a federal "purge" against the homeless.
Now the mayor is the target of a recall effort.
Parris also does not believe in separation of church and state. In 2010, he declared his city was "a Christian community." Plus, he endorsed an alliance with the Chinese Communist Party. And don't even ask about his COVID response. He said that failure to wear a mask was "an act of domestic terrorism."
R. Rex Parris is an act of domestic terrorism.
Today, I saw a Whoopi Goldberg look-alike driving around in front of Target.
To fight the forces of loom and doom, I Scholared last month around Ludlow and Bromley, an event that yielded 27 biptacular photos.
Peep 'em now before they peep you...
An ish! Wow!
The April edition of The Last Word is pub, and it's as important as all the rest! This issue talks about a college town's poorly attended events, people vandalizing a luxury apartment complex, Donald Trump's Sesame Street obsession, tons of people acting up at school, highway surveillance cams, the New York Post's crusade to replace gum with wood, a school donation box getting thrown at a ceiling fan, flatulence of professional golfers and TV sports reporters, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/844606017/The-Last-Word-4-2025
If that doesn't work, bip on over here...
The substance of new congressional bills is usually bad enough, but sometimes they can only pass because of past congressional wrongdoing.
There's a regulation by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that rightly limits overdraft fees to $5, but Congress is taking an axe to that. Yet the Senate bill to overturn this commonsense rule passed by only 52-48.
What about the filibuster? Whenever any good bills come along, we have to listen to how it needs 60 senators to pass. Why is this bill different?
It turns out that it doesn't need 60, because it was approved under the Congressional Review Act, a stale relic that's part of the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996.
We're still dealing with the Contract with America? Congress did lots of Nazi things under the Contract with America, but we shouldn't still have to put up with any of them. Yet President Clinton actually signed the 1996 bill into law, so we can't count on the Democrats to clean up the rubble.
We're ruled by unconstitutional laws passed by a Congress that hired an open apologist for the Nazis and the KKK as its House historian. It's just like how we're still affected by Reagan, who supported Francisco Franco and South Africa's apartheid dictatorship.
The Contract with America was America's Nazi moment. But for it, there might not have been so many Nazi moments since.
Today I went to the parade for baseball's opening day!
It's recovering a little bit from the malaise of the past few years. People beered, and the airy vapors of a certain smokable herb wafted through the air!
Also, I saw 3 - count 'em, 3 - people who were in such a festive mood that they bubbled.
It's time for yet another batch of Roads Scholaring photos!
This one is from last month when I went to Elmwood Place and the north side of Cincinnati. This event yielded 49 photos. It would have been funnier if it was 48, so I could do a Sesame Street voice, but it's 49.
So point your pooper here...
Today at the friendly neighborhood Krogie-Wogie, I saw some guy who strongly resembled Donald Fagen of Steely Dan.
Here's a story that the BBC recently reported. We have to rely on foreign media for this story. The American media won't report it, because the American media is so closely tied to the Chinese government.
A former senior exec for Facebook said the social media behemoth worked "hand in glove" with China's ruling regime to censor content. Mark Zuckerberg himself considered agreeing to hide posts until Chinese authorities could approve them. This took place in the mid-'10s.
Facepoo also considered allowing Chinese officials access to users' personal data.
A complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission even alleges that Zuckerberg and other Facebook execs made "misleading statements" to respond to congressional inquiries about collusion with China.
Facebook's parent company Meta then accused the whistleblower who exposed all of this of being paid off by "anti-Facebook activists." But Facebook is so bad now that pretty much everyone who has ever used it has become an "anti-Facebook activist." Maybe Facebook needs to stop censoring posts, fix its broken notifications, and start respecting the privacy of those who don't want their friends list revealed.
Censoring content at the behest of China is like when Yahoo ratted out journalists to the Chinese government - which caused the journalists to be imprisoned for years.
America also has a record of suppressing dissent lately. Cities try to close theaters if they show movies they don't like (in addition to illegally searching bags of people on the beach), and government officials have coerced social networking sites into removing content they disagree with. The U.S. has lost a lot of credibility in its claims to be a bastion of personal liberty. But in addition to ending its online censorship program, the government should also pass a law promising stiff punishment for American websites that collude with the Chinese government.
Last month, I went Roads Scholaring in Dayton, Kentucky. The main purpose was to investigate an attempt to illegally barricade a public right-of-way, but there was some other assorted biperoony.
So point your pooper here...
Quick! Call the Unnatural History Museum! The Tea Party is still around!
Most cities have regulations on residential properties that are designed to protect residents. Louisville has regulations to fight lead hazards and to maintain a list of residential property owners. This isn't to pick on owners, but to help make sure they maintain safe properties. Everybody has to follow rules. I do too. That's part of living in a society.
But now city council - led by Democrats - has gutted most of the city's regulations, not because of any new laws, but because of a bill that hasn't even become law. A bill in the Kentucky legislature called H.B. 173 was introduced a couple months ago by a Tea Party Republican but has been languishing in committee ever since because it's so unpopular. This bill would ban local governments from creating such regulations.
Gee, what a big lesson in courage by Louisville Democrats!
The bill itself defies the principles of local control, but the main point here is that the so-called Democrats who run our cities cave at the snap of a finger. That's because they actually support the Republican bill and just won't admit it and care only about raising money off the issue. The Democrats are in power in Louisville and still do what the Republicans want. They can't say they don't have the power to do any better.
Someone on Twitter posted today, "The same Democrats who spent their Obama & Biden admin majorities crying about all the reasons why a majority isn't enough to pass legislation people want now want us to believe they're powerless to stop Republicans because they're out of power." But the Democrats still have a majority in Louisville and are using it to do what Tea Party Republicans want.
Both major parties use executive orders to enact bad ideas at the stroke of a pen, yet they always complain that they don't have the power to enact good ideas. The reality is that they don't want to enact good ideas. The parties have different priorities, but have become practically identical in their policy stances.
March into March with a brand new 16-page ish of The Last Word!
This edition discusses NBC's disinformation, our fight to reopen a local street, a school getting mad because I worked at the library, the FCC's UHF-only cities, making art out of broken glass, splicing a Pink Panther cartoon into an "educational" film, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/833529373/The-Last-Word-3-2025
If that doesn't work, gallivant over here...
We've just crossed yet another terrifying threshold.
Recently, the Clarksdale Press Register in Mississippi published an editorial that dared to criticize Clarksdale city government. The newspaper charged that the city hadn't properly notified the public about a meeting regarding a resolution sent to the state legislature.
The city sued the paper over this editorial. Even more unbelievably, a judge sided with city officials and ordered the paper to remove the editorial from its website.
You can't make this stuff up.
We live in an era of the most extreme censorship we've seen in our lifetimes. School boards yank books off the shelves. Some books aren't even allowed to be published at all anymore, even though they were considered inoffensive in my youth. Federal officials have been caught coercing social media sites into deleting true information - and the Supreme Court let them do it. But the latest incident is a whole new frontier for censorship.
The plague of democratic backsliding is very real.
This is exactly like if the Campbell County Schools sued me for all the true statements I've made. I know they wanted to, but their lawyer probably laughed in their face. But this case sets a bad precedent that could open the floodgates and silence all but the biggest news outlets.
A couple weeks ago, I went Roads Scholaring for the first time since my recent heart surgery. This time, I went to the west side of Cincinnati and explored some small roads I hadn't covered yet.
This outing yielded 18 photos. So point your pooper here...
The month of Febrewery is getting under way!
That means it's time for the February edition of The Last Word! This ish talks about how I had to have heart surgery because of our totalitarian rulers, a public alley in Cincinnati being limited to wealthy residents, movers stealing items, Uncle Al chewing bubble gum, and more!
So slog on over here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/822434754/The-Last-Word-2-2025
If that doesn't work, float on over here...
I had another funny dream last night.
In this dream, I visited some bookstore and buyed a book about Usenet from 1990. The store had an area in the back where people could sit down and have coffee, juice, and bagels. When I was back there, someone farted really loud. A bunch of very studious college students who were sitting at the tables burst out laughing.
Then, when the laughter was dying down, some older guy went, "It wasn't me," just like in the song.
Say what you want about Twitter. Well, as long as it's bad.
I know the censorship isn't as bad as it was, but it's not completely gone. And the embedded timelines are now either broken completely or they don't show posts in order, which means some timelines start with posts from 10 years ago. I got a Bluesky account to use as my timeline instead, even though censorship on Bluesky is supposedly worse.
But there is something on Twitter I noticed that actually works. I accidentally clicked on some symbol on my Twitter page, and it actually came up with some coherent descriptions of my page, as if Twitter properly catalogs accounts somehow.
One of the descriptions reads...
"A vintage music enthusiast with a sharp political edge, lamenting the repackaging of political ideologies and celebrating the lost hits of yesteryears."
Another says...
"Bandit73's been skewering politicians left and right, from calling out Phil Gramm's gaffes to dubbing Andy Beshear 'Ant Farm Andy.'"
I don't quite agree with that though, because neither Phil nor Andy is on the left.
Biddle gibzz!
Yesterday, the Senate actually voted 99-0 to confirm Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.
You may remember that Rubio was a Tea Party favorite when he was first "elected" - but Tea Party members later abandoned him because he was too right-wing even for them. That was after he praised the Patriot Act and the NSA's illegal phone spying.
The most right-wing Senate in the country's history - by far.
Presidents change, but their underwear never does.
Here's something we should talk about, even if we know it won't be remedied. Pundits say Social Security is facing a shortfall that will force more benefit cuts in the 2030s. Whether this is actually true remains to be seen, but it could just be right-wing propaganda to force cuts before then.
Or the shortfall could be real. If so, it's because of the actions of those who want cuts now. The fact is that Congress and the George W. Bush regime stole from Social Security to pay for their pet projects such as illegal wars. They did not borrow. They stole.
It is folly to say Social Security can't borrow to cover the shortfall because government agencies can't spend more than they have - though talking heads have said it. Have they been paying attention for the past 200 years? The government has been in debt for most of the time since it was founded. The Pentagon is always spending more than it has.
It's like having a Balanced Budget Amendment on steroids. It's as if there's an amendment that applies to everything except war spending. There actually was a version of the Balanced Budget Amendment that was proposed by some right-wing loudmouths that was like this.
Social Security costs money, but it doesn't lose money. Nobody dares to accuse the Pentagon of losing money, even though it has failed audits over and over again.
All of this is after steep Social Security cuts have already taken place. What the media calls the "third rail" of politics is always the first thing cut. Always. The retirement age was raised, and nobody has lifted a finger to restore it. It's also much harder to qualify for disability than it used to be. This is borne out by statistics that show that far fewer people collect Social Security disability benefits than they once did.
While anachronistic jizzumjaws like Phil Gramm continue to have op-eds published that laughably claim Social Security and Medicaid are forms of welfare, and that they should be cut further, the facts are swept under the rug.
This is why our brand of hard-hitting investigative journalism must be kept alive.
Today at Kroger (which was out of milk as usual), I saw a Will Geer look-alike.
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